Major airlines report declines in traffic
Sacramento Business Journal - by Tierney Plumb Washington Business Journal
American Airlines, US Airways and Southwest Airlines all reported traffic declines last month.
All three carriers serve Sacramento International Airport.
American Airlines Inc., a subsidiary of AMR Corp., said its traffic fell 14.5 percent in November.
Fort Worth-based American (NYSE: AMR) recorded 9.5 billion revenue passenger miles in November, down from 11.1 billion during the same month last year. Revenue passenger miles is a measure of every paying passenger flying every mile, and is generally the industry’s measure of traffic.
American’s load factor — a measure of the percentage of a plane filled with paying passengers — also dropped 4.6 points from 81.2 percent to 76.6 percent.
American’s domestic traffic also fell 19.3 percent over the previous year due to a 15 percent reduction in capacity in November.
International traffic last month also dropped by 5.4 percent due to a 1.3 percent decline in capacity, American said.
Temple, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc. reported a nearly 7 percent decrease in mainline passenger traffic for November. Southwest Airlines said traffic was down 8 percent.
US Airways (NYSE: LCC) flew 4.26 billion revenue passenger miles last month, down from 4.57 billion in November 2007. The carrier’s passenger-load factor, or percentage of filled seats, was 77.7 percent, down from 78.4 percent in the year-ago period. Capacity fell 6.1 percent to 5.48 billion available seat miles.
Dallas-based Southwest (NYSE: LUV) said traffic last month fell to 5.26 billion revenue passenger miles from 5.74 billion a year earlier. Southwest’s November load factor fell to 63.2 percent from 69.3 percent in November 2007. Southwest is the largest airline at the Sacramento airport, based on the number of passengers.
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